Jacques Calonne is a Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 artist, composer, singer, actor, logogram

Logogram

A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...

ist, and writer.

Life

Calonne studied music from 1944–46 at the conservatories of Mons and Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

, with amongst others the composer André Souris

André Souris

André Souris was a Belgian composer, conductor, musicologist, and writer associated with the surrealist movement.-Biography:...

, who introduced him to the surrealist

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 movement. He then pursued a course of art studies at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts

Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts

The Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels is an art school, founded in 1711.The faculty and alumni of ARBA include some of the most famous names in Belgian painting, sculpture, and architecture: James Ensor, Rene Magritte, and Paul Delvaux...

 in Brussels from 1947 to 1949, when he attended “La fin et les moyens” (The End and the Means), the first Belgian exhibition of the Cobra

COBRA (avant-garde movement)

COBRA was a European avant-garde movement active from 1948 to 1951. The name was coined in 1948 by Christian Dotremont from the initials of the members' home cities: Copenhagen , Brussels , Amsterdam .-History:...

 group at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, where he met Christian Dotremont

Christian Dotremont

Christian Dotremont, , was a Belgian painter and poet who was born in Tervuren, Belgium. He was a founding member of the group Cobra, and later became well known for his painted poems, which he called logograms....

 (Coninck 2007). He immediately attached himself to this movement, becoming its youngest member and taking part in its meetings in the rue de la Paille, as well as in its review and at the exposition "L’Objet à travers les âges" (The Object through the Ages) (Minne [n.d.]). Dividing himself between music and visual arts, he continued to pursue a double career after the dissolution of Cobra (Coninck 2007).

In 1954 he made his first visit to the Internationale Ferienkurse für neue Musik

Darmstadt New Music Summer School

Initiated in 1946 by Wolfgang Steinecke, the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt , held annually until 1970 and subsequently every two years, encompass both the teaching of composition and interpretation and include premières of new works...

 at Darmstadt

Darmstadt

Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...

, where he met Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

 and Bruno Maderna

Bruno Maderna

Bruno Maderna was an Italian conductor and composer. For the last ten years of his life he lived in Germany and eventually became a citizen of that country.-Biography:...

 (Anon. 1997). In 1956 he exhibited paintings at the World Congress of Free Artists in Alba. He is, for all the manifestations of avant-garde, not so very much a nonconformist. In 1957, he co-signed the "Manifesto against Style" with, amongst others, Serge Vandercam, Pierre Restany

Pierre Restany

Pierre Restany , was an internationally known French art critic and cultural philosopher.Restany was born in Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda, Pyrénées-Orientales, and spent his childhood in Casablanca. On returning to France in 1949 he attended the Lycée Henri-IV before studying at universities in France,...

, Yves Klein

Yves Klein

Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany...

, Roel d’Haese, and Pierre Alechinsky

Pierre Alechinsky

Pierre Alechinsky is a Belgian artist. He has lived and worked in France since 1951. His work is related to Tachisme, Abstract expressionism, and Lyrical Abstraction.Alechinsky was born in Brussels...

 (Minne [n.d.]). In 1964, he began publishing his writings (e.g., the novel Belle que jamais, published in Strates, one of Dotremont’s journals) while continuing his musical activities (Deplus [1999], [8]). His 1959 composition Quadrangles was performed on 24 January 1965 at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum

Wallraf-Richartz Museum

The Wallraf-Richartz-Museum is one of the three major museums in Cologne, Germany. It houses an art gallery with a collection of fine art from the medieval period to the early twentieth century...

 in Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

, in the concert series of the second Cologne Courses for New Music (Stockhausen 1971, 198).

In 1971, he created the first of his ink-on-music-paper works and published sixteen lithographs

Lithography

Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...

, with the title "Muettes", in the Daily Bul. In the following year, he resumed painting in oils

Oil painting

Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...

 on paper and fabric, and exhibited at the Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

. Perpetuating the spirit of Cobra, he employed the principle of nonspecialization, cherished by the group, creating logogram

Logogram

A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...

s together with Dotremont. In 1981, he painted on assemblages of match boxes. Though he exhibited in 1949 as a member of Cobra, his first one-man show was mounted only in 1970 at the Dierickx gallery in Brussels. Subsequently, he exhibited many times in this city, where he lives in the working-class neighbourhood of Marolles. He frequently participates in collective exhibitions in Belgium and abroad. His graphic and pictorial work is in the tradition of the plastic practice of writing which developed in Belgium. The rhythm of the elements, the musicality of their distribution in the appropriation of space, and extreme scriptuary fluidity of the symbols reveal the very personal contribution of this musician who paints and draws visual scores (Minne [n.d.]).

In 1995 he played the rôle of the Representative of the Ministry of Culture in the demonic Camping Cosmos

Camping Cosmos

Camping Cosmos is a Belgian 1996 film, sequel to La Vie sexuelle des Belges 1950-1978, directed by Jan Bucquoy. It stars Claude Semal, Lolo Ferrari , Noël Godin , Herman Brusselmans and Arno ....

(1996).

Compositions (selective list)

• Quadrangles, for piano (1959)
• Un autre monde, film score (Vandercam & Dotremont 1959)
• Album, for string quartet (6 vols., 1960s)
• Tome, for 2 pianos and 3 percussionists (1962)
• Scolies, for chamber ensemble (ca. 1964)
• Orbes for orchestra (1965)
• Le Pavillon des passions humaines, film score (Claude François, 1988)
• Emergence des avant-gardes en Belgique francophone, film score (1990)

Writings

• 1968. "Aspects d'un resume (Apropos d' Orbes pour orchestre)". Revue d'Esthetique 21, nos. 2–4 ("Musiques nouvelles"): 59-103.
• 1991. Facéties et compagnie de Christian Dotremont. Préface de Pierre Alechinsky, mise en page de Michel Olyff. Brussels: Quadri Gallery.

Discography

• Calonne, Jacques. 1988. Tenor Mondain. Recorded in 1983. Notes by Jean-Pierre Van Tieghem. Igloo IGL 071 (LP)